# Get bent, spacetime. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 29, 2008, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032 "2008-07-29T02:11:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/1 "2008-07-29T02:11:13Z")
[http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/28/warp-speed-engine.html](http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/07/28/warp-speed-engine.html) Dig it. A classical space warp engine, where the ship surfs warped space. Now, here’s my question. Is it possible to find some way to steal this huge amount of energy it requires from somewhere else? Sort of like bleeding air from one balloon to inflate another. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/2 "2008-07-29T02:22:57Z")
Oddly enough I think that’s how the Planet Express ship works. ---
**Author:** ![Amp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Amp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amp)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/3 "2008-07-29T02:30:14Z")
Good news everybody… ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/4 "2008-07-29T02:39:52Z")
This is the main problem with all sci-fi. Even if they ground their notions in reality as much as possible you will notice they always side-step the energy issues. The future holds some magical ability for massively dense energy storage (so you can carry around your laser rifle and shoot it more than once). Maybe a science type can help but I thought that since mass and energy are equivalent that carrying around the energy equivalent of a Jupiter converted into energy (as is needed in the proposal) is basically the same as trying to carry around Jupiter itself. You’ve changed the form but the result is the same when wanting to move it around. If so then their warp drive has other problems as well. ---
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/5 "2008-07-29T02:54:56Z")
Bah, Warp theory is old-hat, Improbability Theory, OTOH, is _far_ more workable, we just need someone to invent a Sub-Meson Brain, an Atomic Vector Plotter, and give it a nice hot cup of tea ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/6 "2008-07-29T03:18:11Z")
You might find NASA’s [Breakthrough Propulsion Physics](http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/) page interesting. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/7 "2008-07-29T03:25:31Z")
You people are no fun at all! -XT ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/8 "2008-07-29T03:36:09Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] Now, here’s my question. Is it possible to find some way to steal this huge amount of energy it requires from somewhere else? Sort of like bleeding air from one balloon to inflate another. [/QUOTE] This was the main idea in Asimov’s book The Gods Themselves, as well as an episode of Stargate Atlantis, the one in which Mackay meets himself from an alternate universe. There’s at least one other fictional source on the tip of my brain that I can’t quite pull into focus, but you get the gist. Anyway, very interesting idea. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/9 "2008-07-29T03:54:46Z")
Even in theory the [Alcubierre Drive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_metric) needs [exotic matter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_matter) to work, and nobody knows where to find any. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/10 "2008-07-29T04:43:55Z")
I was thinking, simply, could you bleed off energy from one section of spacetime, causing an imbalance, into another, causing an imbalance, say, launching two ships for the price of one, if you get my idea? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2008, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/11 "2008-07-29T04:55:30Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Even in theory the [Alcubierre Drive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_metric) needs [exotic matter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_matter) to work, and nobody knows where to find any. [/QUOTE] Or indeed, if it exists at all. The article cited by the o.p. gives the impression that this is all worked out–one simply needs the requisite amount of energy–but in fact, while the Alcubierre metric is permissible within Special Relativity (insofar as the contraction or expansion of the plenum of spacetime has no speed limit), there is no known method of actually grasping and warping space in this way. And even if we can, the energy budget is literally prohibitive; we’d need the energy of a mid-sized start to send a package of peanuts across the Solar System, which is kind of self-defeating. This isn’t to say that it can’t work, or that some other means of dodging around the normal causal paths through space can’t be found, but we’re hardly ready to break out the phasers and beam down to a nearby planet in Spandex uniforms in order to boldly go where no unlikely plot complication has gone before. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2008, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/12 "2008-07-30T14:05:31Z")
Another problem with Alcubierre-type drives is that at superluminal speeds, everything inside the bubble is causally disconnected from its walls and the exterior, leaving you without the ability to actually control your flight, or even to stop it. Thus, you would depend on a kind of railway-like infrastructure of masses arranged to get your ship where it’s supposed to go, and to stop it at its destination point, by influencing the ‘warp’ in just the right way, the construction of which seems a bit out of our technical scope for the moment. Plus it means you can’t use it for a first trip to anywhere, since you’d have to get where you’d want to go before you could go where you’d want to get. I didn’t quite get what this fancy-schmancy ‘let’s just expand the 11th dimension!’ stringy stuff is supposed to accomplish, though – does it mean you’d be able to do it without the exotic matter? And how would you expand a curled-up dimension anyway? ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2008, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/13 "2008-07-30T16:00:25Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] Is it possible to find some way to steal this huge amount of energy it requires from somewhere else? [/QUOTE] You could run an extension cord from your neighbor’s apartment. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2008, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/14 "2008-07-31T01:09:58Z")
What does the theory have to say about time paradoxes? I gather that no matter what hypothetical mechanism you invoke to suppose it possible, ANY form of FTL travel means that there are reference frames where information can travel backward in time. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2008, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/15 "2008-07-31T01:16:48Z")
page 2 of the linked article is really funny - in the way it so sharply contrasts page 1. Page 1: Hey! We can build a real, working practical warp drive! To the stars! Page 2: Ummm… _all we need to do_ is apply 10^45 joules of energy via a completely unknown process, to manipulate the 11th dimension - expanding and contracting it to create a bubble of dark energy. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2008, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/16 "2008-07-31T01:42:45Z")
Well, I don’t see what the big deal is…after testing and refining the process maybe we can lower the power budget to 10^44 joules and only manipulate the 10th dimension. These things could be as common as house cats! -XT ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2008, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/17 "2008-07-31T23:04:08Z")
10^45 joules. That would be, like, 14 D cell batteries. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2008, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-bent-spacetime/458032/18 "2008-08-01T00:49:03Z")
Yeah. Sneelock, brave Sneelock will do it just fine - don’t ask _how_ he’ll do it - that’s his job, not mine.